The Tamil Nadu Government Wants To Ban TikTok Because It Causes 'Cultural Degeneration'

We've already seen institutions banning PUBG (PlayerUnknowns Battlegrounds) in the last few months, and now, another app is likely to join the list.

Tamil Nadu's Information Technology Minister M. Manikandan made the news after he said he'll be asking the Central Government to ban the infamous video app TikTok.

The minister was responding to a plea by lawmaker Thameemun Ansari. He claims that the younger generation is hooked onto the video-based social media network and is leading to cultural degeneration. He also pointed out that the platform spreads sexually explicit content by morphing innocent people's face.

"We will take up the matter with Centre to take action (possibly banning it)," the IT Minister said, "the same way blue whale game was banned," indicating that the app could have fatal consequences among the youth if action isn't initiated.

TikTok was previously famous as "Musically", a platform to create short videos. The app was acquired by Bytedance in 2017 and merged into a new app called TikTok. Users can create 15-second to 1-minute videos with background music or dialogues for lip-syncing. These short videos have received immense popularity in the last few years and according to research agencies, the app has a 39 per cent userbase from India.

More than 500 million users are available worldwide and the app has been known for its poor privacy controls. There have been multiple incidents of many under-age children being spotted on the platform. In-app monitoring has been a crucial point of criticism as the content is often used to spread hate speech as well.

India won't be the first country to ban the app though. In July 2018, Indonesia briefly banned the app in view of inappropriate content. Recently, the Chennai Police also busted a flesh trade racket that used morphed pictures of women, downloaded from the app to lure customers.

We reached out to TikTok and they said, "At TikTok, maintaining a safe and positive in-app environment is our priority. We have robust measures to protect users against misuse, including easy reporting mechanisms that enable users and law enforcement to report content that violates our terms of use and community guidelines. We are committed to respecting local laws and regulations, and in order to better coordinate with law enforcement agencies, we are also in the process of hiring a Chief Nodal Officer, based out of India."

The company also partnered with Cyber Peace Foundation and announced #SafeHumSafeInternet initiative on Safer Internet Day (5 February). Though, it has been fairly visible that the company has done little to actually improve the platform from an abuse point of view.